Spotify also notes that 15,140 of these 52,600 artists – around 28% – uploaded their own music via the likes of TuneCore, CD Baby and DistroKid. Loud & Clear also enables us to drill down into how many artists generated exactly how much in royalties (inclusive of both publishing and recorded music) from Spotify in 2021.įor example, Spotify now says that 52,600 artists generated over $10,000 on its platform in 2021. Spotify claims: “Even adjusting for inflation, that $7 billion total is the largest sum paid by one retailer to the music industry in one year in history - including any single retailer at the height of the CD or digital download era.”

That figure was up by more than double the $3.3 billion that Spotify says it paid out to the same recipients in 2017, and up by around $2 billion on the “$5 billion-plus” that Spotify has previously claimed to have paid out in 2020.

Those stats reveal that, over the course of last year, Spotify paid out $7 billion (across publishing and recorded music) to music industry rights-holders.

Spotify stats for artists